National World War II Museum addition will be restoration center

For the past 10 years, visitors to the National World War II Museum have gazed upon such carefully restored artifacts as tanks, Jeeps and Higgins landing craft.

The John E. Kushner Restoration Pavilion will consist of a build-out of the existing 940 Magazine St. warehouse. The design, by Voorsanger Mathes, will complement the recently opened Solomon Victory Theater complex with a glass and corrugated steel exterior.

By next spring, they should be able to watch restorers preparing those treasures for prime time. And they won’t have to pay an admission fee.

The work will be done in a 14,400-square-foot building whose construction will be announced Tuesday by museum officials. The structure, to be known as the John E. Kushner Restoration Pavilion, will rise across Magazine Street from the original museum building. Its dominant feature will be a 100-foot façade of storm-resistant glass along Andrew Higgins Drive.

That wall will do more than simply let passers-by watch crews work on ambulances, artillery pieces and tanks. When the time comes to move massive items such as a PT boat or bomber that would be too big for the building’s 15-foot-wide door, workers will be able to make an opening for it by removing the glass panels.

“We could … remove the entire wall,” said Bob Farnsworth, the museum’s senior vice president for capital expansion. “That may happen every three to five years.”

Officials won’t have to wait long to test that feature because one of the first artifacts scheduled for restoration in the new building — a 80-foot-long PT boat made by Higgins Industries of New Orleans — is simply too big to be moved any other way,
Farnsworth said.

Construction is expected to begin within 45 days and take about eight months. The cost will be about $2.5 million, Farnsworth said.

This initiative, which would be similar to what the museum did to the portion of Magazine Street alongside the original building and the expansion dedicated in November, would include burying utility lines underground and improving street lighting and sidewalks, Hill said.

There is no timetable for that project because it is still in the planning stage, Farnsworth said.

The one-story building, whose height will rise from 28 feet at the eaves to 33 feet at the ridge, is designed to complement not only the other museum structures but also its Warehouse District neighbors, Farnsworth said.

The Kushner pavilion will be erected where a warehouse has stood. Although the building will get a new skin and a storm-resistant roof, as well as the glass wall, it will retain the older building’s steel structure, Farnsworth said. It also will retain a crane found in the building, which had been a heavy-machine shop, and a floor of reinforced concrete.

Its components will include spaces for cleaning, welding, painting and woodworking, he said. “That will be behind the area that you’re looking into from the street, which will go back 40 feet.

“This will be a functional work space,” Farnsworth said. “There will always be something going on.”

The building is named for a New Orleans real-estate broker, museum board member and collector of World War II memorabilia who died in 2005.

Kushner used his real-estate acumen to help the museum acquire nearby property for expansion, Farnsworth said.

One of those pieces was a lot on Constance Street that backed up to the building that the Kushner pavilion will replace.

The museum acquired the building after Kushner died, Farnsworth said, because the building’s owner let museum officials know that he wanted to swap his building for the lot.